Sharing the Past
by Sgt. Moffitt
Summary: A Memorial Day story.


_A/N: I don't own Hogan's Heroes and I don't get paid for this; it is truly a labor of love._

_In honor of all those who served their country, and in particular those who sacrificed their own freedom in the cause of freedom for all._

* * *

The short speeches were done, the Gettysburg Address was recited by a very nervous teenager, and the National Anthem was sung.

Then came the sound of "Taps", rendered quite well by another nervous teenager, and a moment of silence.

Afterwards the little crowd dispersed, with neighbors smiling and talking as they headed back to their cars parked near the country cemetery. It was a lovely late spring day, and picnics and family get-togethers beckoned as part of the traditional Memorial Day celebration.

Tony Garlotti watched them go, but he lingered inside the gates, leaning only slightly on the cane that his son insisted he use ever since that unfortunate fall earlier this spring. On his own, he went from grave to grave examining the headstones and nodding in approval over the ones provided for veterans. Each one had flowers arranged before the headstone and a little American flag fluttering over it, courtesy of the local Memorial Association.

Graves in this cemetery dated back to the Civil War, and Tony smiled faintly at one memorial which stood proudly in the middle of the cemetery. Here in northern Michigan—deep in the heart of Union territory—was a memorial for a young man who had fallen in the cause of the Confederacy.

_Well, they were all Americans in that conflict, why shouldn't he be here? _he thought.

The loss of brave young men during the Civil War—no matter which side they fought on—had been a loss to everyone in the United States. He sighed. War is always a waste of human life, and during the Civil War America's losses had been doubly tragic.

He moved on through the dappled shade, but still kept to the older section of the cemetery. Here was a lad who died of wounds suffered in France, in 1918. Another one had the American Legion marker for service during the First World War, but although he had survived the war, he died only a few years later, in 1922. Tony shook his head. He could just imagine the parents grieving over the terrible irony of that loss.

And here was a more recent headstone of a young man who had survived his service in the Second World War, only to die in Korea in 1951. Saddest of all was a new granite headstone in the farthest corner of the cemetery, with the word "Afghanistan" below the dates of birth and death.

But by far the greatest number of veterans' graves belonged to his own generation. The Greatest Generation, as his son and grandson were wont to say.

Tony wasn't so sure about that. He had only done his duty, after all, just like everyone else. In the midst of the chaos and military blunders and opportunism that was the Second World War, there was also a clear enemy that had to be destroyed. There was no other course of action to be taken, and they did what had to be done.

Things were much simpler back then, he decided. Hitler and his henchmen and the Japanese militarists had done so many terrible things, and although much of the evil that had been done only came to light at the end of the war, Tony and his friends and family knew at the outset what kind of enemy they would be fighting.

_We did good,_ Tony thought. _Even if the world is far from perfect today, we did good back then._

He paused at the grave of a World War II serviceman. Born in 1924, only a few months before Tony himself, he had fought in the South Pacific, married in 1948, and died in 2000, with his wife following a few months later. A good life, apparently, as there was an added inscription of "beloved father and grandfather". This man had lived to see the space program, the computer age, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dawn of the new millennium, but was spared the experience of 9/11.

_Not a bad way to go,_ Tony thought.

He stepped over to the next row. A marker commemorated another World War II serviceman, but one who had not survived the war: he had been lost at sea during the Battle of the Atlantic. Next to it was a headstone belonging to an Army Air Forces sergeant with the same surname, who died a year later. Brothers, probably, and a tragic loss for this tiny community.

Funny, but there was no mention of POWs on any headstones in this quiet little corner of northern Michigan. Perhaps none of the veterans buried here had been prisoners of war. Or maybe the Veterans Administration didn't allow the mention of POW status on a headstone...Tony didn't know. He figured he'd let Tony Junior worry about that when the time came; why should he care what happened after he was gone?

Tony was about to move on again, but then he stopped in his tracks, thinking deeply.

When he had returned to the States in 1945 after the liberation of Stalag 13, he had been sworn to secrecy because of Colonel Hogan's operation. Tony would only be free to talk about his POW experience when details of that operation were declassified, which happened sometime in the early 1950s.

But he had never wanted to, for reasons that had nothing to do with Colonel Hogan or the operation. He remembered Tony Three saying to him once, reproachfully, "You never talk about the war, Grandpa."

And it was true. He just couldn't discuss it. Tony, like many others, simply did not want to talk about being a prisoner of war.

He knew that he had been very fortunate to be at Stalag 13 compared to other former Kriegies, and Tony didn't blame those men for bottling up their bad experiences. And to tell the truth, having been a POW wasn't exactly considered a heroic part of a man's past. On his return home he had found that friends and family tactfully shied away from the subject of his wartime incarceration.

Added to this was the guilt he had felt—and still felt to this day—for having survived the war when so many of his crewmates had not: the very crewmates he was remembering today. But Tony was also aware that he was one of the pitifully few left to tell the tale of the personal cost of the Second World War, and in particular the cost borne by POWs.

So many people seemed to think that being a prisoner of war was just "sitting it out" while others did the real work. True, he had not exactly been sitting it out while at Stalag 13. But it was also true that none of the Kriegies—and certainly not the POWs of the Japanese—had just sat it out. They had served their country in battle and continued to serve their country in captivity, many of them under terrible conditions where it was a struggle just to survive. More than a third of Japanese-held POWs _hadn't_ survived.

And who was left now to remember them?

He heard the murmur of voices and lifted his head to see his family approaching. There was Tony Junior, in his sixties and as white-haired as Tony himself, with a spring in his step and a broad smile on his face. And Tony Three, with an even broader smile because he had his pretty little wife at his side, and she was holding the latest addition to the family.

The latest addition happened to be eight-month-old Tony Four, who was reaching out chubby little arms to his great-grandfather and smiling a two-toothed smile.

Tony smiled back, and made a resolution in his heart. Damn it, he was proud of his service as a POW, and it was time he said so.

It wasn't too late, not as long as he had breath in his body. He would share his experiences with his family and whoever would listen. Not about his part in Colonel Hogan's operation, but about his experiences as an ordinary POW. He owed that to the memory of his fellow Kriegies and to former POWs everywhere, living and dead.

_The future is yours, little Tony, _he thought as he gazed at his namesake._ I pray that it will be a peaceful one. But you deserve to know __the sacrifices that were made__ in order to defeat a great evil. So I'm going to make sure that you learn all about the past. And maybe, just maybe, your generation won't be doomed to repeat it._

* * *

A/N: Tony Garlotti was a featured character in the episode "The Pizza Parlor". He also appeared in "Airborne", an earlier story of mine, and he's the star of the final chapter of "The Guys in the Back Row".


End file.
